Season Preview: 54 Wins or Bust

On January 2, 2013, the Warriors beat the Los Angeles Clippers to secure a 22-10 start to their 2012-13 season. At the time, it was a number treated gingerly, even among relentlessly optimistic Warriors fans — a quirk of favorable scheduling and overachieving play, too good to be true. If the Warriors had held that blistering pace last season, they would have finished with the then-unimaginable total of 56 wins. How quickly expectations change. What was once inconceivable is now not only within reach, but even predicted by a brave few. The days of the underdog Warriors are gone. Now it’s time to play like the favorites.

Win projections are the NBA’s version of the Farmers’ Almanac — often cited and entirely speculative. An injury or an unexpected breakout star, on the Warriors or a playoff rival, can wipe out layers of underlying assumptions. So take these predictions for however little they’re worth.

My guess for the 2013-14 Warriors is 54 wins. That would be the highest total since 1991-92, when the team won 55 games only to be bounced in the first round of the playoffs. It would be the third highest total since the Warriors moved to the West Coast in 1962-63. In other words, the stage is set not just for a good year, but for a historic year. I arrived at my guess in two different ways.

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First, I worked off of last season’s 47 wins as a starting point. I added up all the positives — Iguodala’s addition, a healthy Bogut, another year of experience for Curry, Thompson, Barnes and Jackson. I knocked off some wins for the negatives — the loss of Jack, Landry and Malone; uncertain chemistry. Taken together, the 2013-14 Warriors don’t feel like they’ll be 10 games better than the impressive team that preceded them. But they do feel, particularly with the continued emergence of Stephen Curry and a rejuvenated Andrew Bogut, like they could be at least 5 games better. I used the playoff performances, where Curry and Bogut were the game-changing forces on offense and defense, to gauge just how much better this team could be. With both players at full strength, I settled on a 7-game improvement for 54 total wins. If the new players are able to replicate some of the aggressive chemistry of last year’s squad, the bump could be even higher. On paper, you don’t have to squint too hard to see an elite team.

Second, I looked at the rest of the West to gauge how the Warriors stack up. I have the Clippers and Rockets as clearly superior teams. I’d also give the edge to the Thunder, so long as Westbrook returns in the first few weeks of the season. Every year I write off the Spurs as being over the hill — and every year they prove me wrong — but I’ll do it one more time. The playoff Warriors were nearly a match for them. The addition of Iguodala and his perimeter defense would have dramatically changed the face of that series in the Warriors’ favor. Another year on the bodies of Duncan, Ginobili and Parker will make the heroics a little bit harder to muster. I give the Warriors a very slight edge. I also have the Warriors over Memphis by a very narrow margin. The Grizzlies seemed to tread water this off-season while the rest of the West retooled. They’re a safe pick for 50 wins, but they don’t have the upside of this Warriors squad. If you slot the Warriors into the fourth seed in the West, that’s been around a 54-win team over the past 5 complete seasons (56, 55, 53, 54, 54).

Ultimately, a win total’s meaning depends on the numbers around it. It’s a ticket to the playoffs. The comparative number of wins determines whether it’ll be a seat in first class or coach. As the Warriors change their perspective — from underdog to potential power — they need to change their objectives. The Warriors shouldn’t care about whether they win 54, 64 or 44 games. They should be singularly focused on securing home court advantage in the playoffs. That means edging ahead of the Clippers or besting all the other division runner-ups. For a team looking to make a deep run into the post-season, having a relatively easy time in the first round can be a huge advantage — particularly for a team like the Warriors with lingering injury concerns. The Warriors always rave about the boost provided by Arena fans. Last year’s team was 28-13 at home, but sub-.500 on the road (19-22). More than any arbitrary number of wins, the Warriors’ goal for the 2013-14 season should be to secure as much of that post-season advantage as possible.

Adam Lauridsen

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I count on you and the other sages (moto, bryshiao, SOA, El Topo, Tired, Our Team, many others) to keep me grounded. I’ll be the raving optimist. We need both perspectives.

Now let’s go kick the hell out of this Association.

dr_john

Well, the 2013-14 season has officially tipped off. Not long ago the Pistons had a very moving opening to their first home game (great music, choir)
Hope to catch them again this year. I thought Peter Guber should be all over this for our Dubs.

Peter Moto

JVG coached Mark Jackson as a player 2000-’01, and later as a broadcaster, which was fairly critical in his education as a coach.

sartre

Guber hasn’t had a major box office hit as a producer since Batman Returns in 1992. Maybe his best marketing days are behind him.

I don’t expect any changes until late January or February, and agree that they don’t really need to look long term if NN impresses as a future solution in the back court, or Kuzmic does the same up front.

But if this team flounders on into January, I won’t be surprised if a bigger deal is made.

My totally uninformed and biased opinion is that the W’s defense may surprise many, be actually very good, and in fact help win a few games when the offense is not humming so good.

Peter Moto

Green can also be the first sub if iguodala or thompson get the first break, leading to either returning while some reserves are still on the court and stabilizing them.

jsl165

It’s a joke that anyone thinks Guber was EVER a creative guy, a real producer of movies.

In fact, Guber NEVER produced a single movie by himself. Basically, he glommed onto Jon Peters (the model for the Warren Beatty character in Shampoo), and those two pretended they knew something about film, tho they almost always left a wie path of destruction in their wake.

Guber’s closest to being the one guy running things, was, coincidentally, his first movie — The Deep (terrible flick, but starring JBisset’s lovely breasts) in ’77 — tho most concede his Associate Producer George Justin really did everything there.

In Batman Returns, above, for example, there were eight “producers” — two producers, a co-producer, an associate producer, and four executive producers. Guber was one of the four “execs” who culled an EP credit.

In his most recent ” full producer” credit — The Jacket (2005; Keira Knightley, not as bad as it sounded) — Guber WAS one of three “producers” listed — but there were a total of eighteen (18) producers, including executive producers, etc. on that film.

Remember the olden days when there was one real producer on a movie or TV show; Hell, now we sometimes go five minutes into a show before they run thru their dozen plus “producer” credits. It’s become nauseating.

Which brings us full-cycle back to Hollywood Guber, whose best trait is that he makes Lacob look much better by comparison.

But maybe he’s got an in with Peter Gabriel for the home opener . . . .

GwydionRhys

What? No Knicks? Shocking!

Eric Eiserloh

#11 to me

Eric Eiserloh

Thier D has to be their motor this season, if only because it fuels their transition game, which is deadly.

That being said, they have a lot of work to do with their half court sets, which were terrible during the preseason.

GwydionRhys

Getting really tired of hearing how bad we’re going to be without Jack and Landry, but had an idea for improving the second unit. Start Speights, give him about 20 mpg and move Lee and Barnes to the second unit. Would really strengthen the second unit scoring. I admit Speights hasn’t played well enough to start, but feel this would distribute the talent a little more evenly to prevent drop off. Hoping Nedovic or Baze wins that backup Pg gig.

Eric Eiserloh

Looking like the champs… beastly raw!

thewarriorsrule

we need to be good now if we want to prove we are part of the elite.
starting thompson in place of barnes is a mistake. why do we need to
put all 5 of our best players in at the same time? why do we have to
put no offense in our bench unit? why can’t we mold thompson into the
6th man role now? i would start green over thompson.

what a huge mistake! i would start barnes over klay. jackson is a
terrible coach. he’s a “flow” coach? in other words, he doesn’t know
what the heck he is doing.

“The Deep” is the reason why I stopped reading and subscribing to Time. Wondered why that bad movie deserved a cover story. Discovered Time had invested in that film. Seeing no reason for reading propaganda, I stopped.

dr_john

Kinda hard to agree with since I think Coach is going to play the minutes out of all of these guys as much as he can. Health permitting.

I’ve been somewhat harsh on Klay last year, justifiably I think, but he looks ready to get up to average this year, maybe and then some. Coach will get everything he can out of his top players and resort to the role players as he MUST, no more. That’s his M.O.

Our Team

I’m just waiting for the right pre-game intro music to make my season intro

On the Clips-Lakers: will say again that Farmar and Collison were on my short list, they signed very low$ contracts, which surprised me. I lean to Nedovic as a good backup for the Dubs, though, just a question of how quickly he “gets” the NBA.

Camelot

LOL blog brothers being interviewed on kgmz…

Our Team

Agreed Doc. Xavier Henry looks really good, too. I hadno idea he had this kind of court vision and playmaking ability. He’s a strong playmaker off the bench for the Lakers.

Our Team

Lakers’ first string getting lots of rest bc the reserves are lighting it upend killing the Clips’ first string. The Lakers’ team doing the damage is their small ball team, running circles around theClips. Mental note, Warriors.

Eric Eiserloh

The season has just begun, but the Clippers looking very overrated, this being a team picked by many pundits and former players (now analysts) to finish atop the Western conference.

Better to revisit all predictions 25-30 games into the season and see how the teams are all playing then.

Camelot

dubcakes has good observations on games yet posts in those dreary casket posts of the past..

Eric Eiserloh

They play us at our place on the back end of a back-to-back, but seeing as nobody is playing too many minutes, they might just come in loosy goosy: warmed up and confident.

That being said, I think that we match up very well (at least our first 5), and we should be able to run and play our game without getting dragged into a half court slow down.

Camelot

Does anyone believe Nedo is the dubs 1st facilitator off the bench?

dr_john

Does anyone believe Mario Chalmers or Norris Cole are the #1 facilitators for the Heat?

Hammertime

i made the mistake of looking for said comment. man, things are getting hot ‘n’ heavy in there. far from dreary!